Apart from setting the world to rights, Mr R and I chatted about an injured fox cub that was sitting under a hedge in my front garden last time he and I met. There was good news to relay, dear reader, the cub was caught by a friend of a friend and taken to an animal hospital to have its broken leg fixed.

Mr R was a keen photographer and historian of photographic methods. We talked about photo booths not just in terms of the passport photo that always looks like a police mug shot but creative uses that predated mobile phones.